The Game Philosophe

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Below is a discussion about gender representation in videogames that I participated in on reddit. It begins with redditor DeckardPain expressing his frustration over the push to better representation. He fears it might cripple artistic freedom. But he is also trying to understand why it's such a big issue today. Redditor Genermis responds, but DeckardPain feels his questions aren't being answered.

The Game Philosophe to the rescue! I went about systematically answering all of Deckard's Q's on the forum. The reply ending up being quite long so I decided that I would share it with my readers. The first part is a bit of the exchange between DeckardPain and Genermis. My response follows. Enjoy!

Fair gender representation really doesn't have a place in any work of fiction in my opinion.

If the entire gender equality issue in video games gets to the point
where developers are coerced into abiding by your specific standards and
how you want to be seen as a gender, then where does the gender
equality issue cross the line into the territory of game developers'
& designers' freedom of expression?

If you're coercing game devs to represent X the way X wants to be
seen every time, then doesn't it step on their toes a bit too much?

Example: MGS5's character Quiet.
Kojima has had a risqué characters in almost every iteration of the MGS
franchise. So why the problem now? Is it gender equality band wagoners
just pointing the finger at anything they can? Is it that people are
just becoming more and more meek? When did the movement of "you're
hurting my feelings, please stop" from people older than high school
kids become a thing? I'm not asking to irritate you, I'm asking because I
genuinely don't get where this shit came from.

We
are tired of being analyzed, defined and represented by people other
than ourselves, or worse yet, not considered at all. We are frustrated
by the imposed isolation and invisibility that comes from being told or
expected to choose either a homosexual or heterosexual identity.[...]

While
I don't necessarily get where you're coming from because I can't really
relate to your issue, I don't disagree with you or think that your
stance is wrong.

One of the biggest problems I have with discussing any controversial
subject with someone who is a strong advocate for the subject on either
side, is that they always feel the need to go into defensive mode
straight from the start.

Try to believe me when I say I'm not typing it to troll, bash, or hate on you and your preferences.

Again I only posed the questions because people rarely ever think of
the bigger picture outside of themselves. Now what I'm going to say may
offend or make you angry, so I'm sorry but I'm going to say it anyways
but please try to remember what is in bold above.

I get that you're passionate about the subject, but you honestly
sound like some Anonymous fanboy preaching on your soapbox with your
first reply to me. I get that this is a product of being passionate on a
subject, and I'm not flaming you or shit talking you for it. Just
wanted to make sure you were aware of how it appears to an outsider.

The initial question I posed was:

If the entire gender equality issue in video games gets to the point
where developers are coerced into abiding by your specific standards and
how you want to be seen as a gender, then where does the gender
equality issue cross the line into the territory of game developers'
& designers' freedom of expression?If you're coercing game devs to represent X the way X wants to be
seen every time, then doesn't it step on their toes a bit too much?

I would still really like this question answered as best you can,
because I strongly support the idea of keeping gender equality out of
all forms of fiction.

where does the gender equality issue cross the line into the
territory of game developers' & designers' freedom of expression?

First, calling certain groups' requests for representation a
restriction on artistic freedom is a stretch. How is providing more
choices and identities limiting creativity?

If you're coercing game devs to represent X the way X wants to be
seen every time, then doesn't it step on their toes a bit too much?

Again, you're framing the issue as a zero sum game when it isn't. It's
not about fighting over what X should be, it's about getting Y and Z to
be part of the picture as well. It's not restricting representation,
it's expanding it, it's multiplying the possibilities.

Kojima has had a risqué characters in almost every iteration of the MGS franchise. So why the problem now?

This is my favorite bit from you because it reveals so much about why
you fail to grasp the issues at stake, so I'm going focus on it.

You
equate the current criticism of gender representation to something as
trivial as the hurt feelings of high school kids and you wonder when
people stopped growing up.

Ironically, it is you who are still stuck in a high school mentality
and the rest of the world that has grown up. Let me bring you up to
speed.

The current critique of gender representation concerns centuries of a
patriarchal worldview that sought to impose certain normative views of
gender and exclude others that didn't fit into that scheme. This
worldview, by the way, includes the placement of men above women, the
treatment of women and objects of property (literally property not that
long ago), and the labeling of homosexuals as diseased criminals (up
until the 1970s in the US, gay men could be ordered by a court of law to
undergo electroshock therapy to "cure" them of their disorder). The
discrimination still continues today in powerful ways that include the
pervasive representation of women as sex objects in popular media (the
Quiet, for example) and the widespread resistance to recognizing
homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgendered individuals as legitimate
sexual orientations and identities.

"Hurt feelings," I hope you can see, doesn't quite capture the
significance of a centuries-old culture of systematic oppression that
gender critics are shedding light on today. Would you call the
discussion about slavery and segregation in US and the social
inequalities of its aftermath still felt today a matter of "hurt
feelings"? Would you say the discussion about the colonial rape of
natural resources in Africa and Asia by Europeans in the 19th century,
and the systemic poverty and political turmoil that carries on today as a
result of it, "hurt feelings"?

Is it gender equality band wagoners just pointing the finger at
anything they can? Is it that people are just becoming more and more
meek?

No and No. People are becoming more conscious of the historical and
contemporary realities of gender discrimination (just as they are about
race, class, and exploitation) and they are beginning to challenge
people who perpetuate (consciously or unconsciously) the values and
norms that have privileged a certain white, male identity at the expense
of everything else.

where does the gender equality issue cross the line into the
territory of game developers' & designers' freedom of expression?

I have something else to say about this question because it gets
raised a lot. No one is trying to deny artists freedom of expression in
any legalistic sense. The current criticism about gender is an extension
of the freedom of expression--the freedom of critique. Anyone who wants
to participate in any public forum, in a free society, has to accept
this as part of the package. You post on Reddit or a forum, you are
implicitly accepting that others can respond to your statements in any
way they want. The same is true for works of art and consumer products.
Creators have the right to make what they want, and the rest of the
world has the right to say and criticize it however they want.

You might be thinking now, "Bah, bah, bah, bah doesn't that put
pressure on creators to conform to the whining babies? Won't that push
them to compromise their artistic vision?"

The answer is that this will depend on each creator. If his/her
"artistic vision" entails a game with scantly clad women being rescued
by muscle-bound white men, he or she is free to pursue that vision to
his/her heart's content. If the voices of others point out the ways the
creation perpetuates values that have systematically oppressed millions
and this makes the creator feel uncomfortable, that's just too bad for
the creator. Freedom of expression is a two-way street.

You see Deckard, we live in what's called a "society," and part of
growing up in this society is realizing that it consists of other people
who don't always agree with us or share our values or, heaven forbid,
challenge our worldviews (even if we are video game makers!). I know it
sucks. It'd be great if we could all just live in our own specially
designed echo-chambers and have our egos endlessly gratified, but that's
just how things are. Try to manage as best you can.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Watching the recent IGN gameplay video, it seems that Bloodborne's approach to world design will follow the template of Demon's Souls fairly closely.In Demon's Souls, players accessed the game's main zones through a central hub called the Nexus. Within the Nexus were several "Archstones" (one for each zone) that allowed the player to warp to a specific area. The zones, though they could be intricately designed themselves, were not however connected with each other, nor was the hub world attached to any of them. Rather, each zone simply had its own subzones which would be accessed by through its designated Archstone.For many, this was a design shortcoming that Demon's Souls spiritual successor, Dark Souls, overcame by replacing the Nexus and its Archstones with a fully interconnected world in which bonfires provided checkpoints.It seems that Bloodborne is backsliding on this point.At around 5:10 in the IGN video linked above, you can see the player use a "headstone of
awakening" to warp from a central hub, called the Dream Refuge, to the zone "Above Ground." Specifically, the player selects the subzone called First Floor Sickroom. Crucially, other, yet-to-be-activated headstones can be seen nearby.Later in the video, after the player has progressed through the area, another subzone (Central Yharnam) is added to the Above Ground headstone. The player returns to the Dream Refuge hub and uses the headstone to warp back to this more advanced point.The scheme appears identical to that of Demon's Souls' unlocking subzones. But how does this show that Bloodborne will be subdivided like Demon's Souls? After all, couldn't it be the case the world is still interconnected like Dark Souls, just with a detached hub world grafted on top of it?My answer is that it is highly unlikely that Bloodborne's world will be fully interconnected, and that instead, interconnection will be limited to self-contained zones. Here's why:If the world were fully interconnected, there would be no need for the multiple headstones of awakening we see in the Dream Refuge hub. The only reason for having multiple headstones would be a divided game world.Think about it. If the world were completely interconnected like Dark Souls, then any warp point should be able to send you to any other warp point. Having more than one headstone in the hub world would then be a pure redundancy with no purpose. Since it's implausible that the designers of the game would just throw in unnecessary headstones, there must be something that makes them useful. And the only thing that would make multiple headstones useful would be the existence of disconnected zones.Another point to consider is the fact that when the player in the video touches the second warp point, Central Yharnam, that returns him back to the hub (15:07), the menu that pops up does not give him the option of warping to the First Floor Sickroom warp point. He is only given the option to return to the Dream Refuge--just as in Demon's Souls where warp points could only take you back to the Nexus and not send you to other areas (even areas within the zone you are playing).Some might wonder why From would do this. Don't they understand that Dark Souls' interconnected world was a major improvement over the hub system of Demon's Souls!The fact is, there are plenty of reasons why From would decide to do this. One is load times. Having a fully interconnected world presents design challenges concerning where to conduct loading as the player moves through the world. From might have decided to simplify this by putting hard divisions between areas.Another possible reason is the inherent difficulty of designing a fully interconnected world. From might not have had the time to do this, and decided instead to focus on making each zone itself interconnected without bothering to make all the zones come together as well.Of course, without official confirmation or more gameplay, this remains speculation on my part. But I feel confident that what I've said will prove to be true. What we've seen just doesn't make sense otherwise.But what do you think? Would you welcome a return to the Demon's Souls hub system? Or are you disappointed that From is taking a step backward? Let me know in the comments below.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Evil Within is what you call "a flawed gem." Having played through the game on Survivor difficulty and being about to
finish a run on Nightmare, I can say with some authority that the game is seriously bogged down in a lot of frustrating stuff. For example, there's a crate you can hide in one of the game's later chapters. On several occasions (but not consistently), I was "seen" by a patrolling zombie through the crate's wall, resulting in an insta-gameover (you can't be spotted in this section). More generally, the stealth in the game is not implemented well, and the same can be said for context sensitive actions, which are often finicky.

But despite these flaws, there are just a number of things that The Evil Within does well or interestingly that make it a compelling game for me. It's very challenging and demands a good deal of effort from the player. At the same time, it's a quirky game with an off-kilter sensibility and rhythm that make it stand out from the herd. These parts come together and create a kind of synergy.

The first thing we can talk about is its story. Its disorienting and fragmentary presentation is unconventional in the world of videogames. I lot of people dislike it for this reason, but I personally find it stimulating and intriguing. Rather than being direct and concrete, the narrative is dreamlike and abstract. Think David Lynch rather than Cormac McCarthy, because enjoying the story requires a certain appreciation for the surrealist tradition and its willingness to defy logical conventions. You'll have to think about the narrative if you want to make connections between events in the game, and some questions have no clear answers, but the invitation to think and speculate is something I find rewarding in and of itself.

For example, I would contend that the stylistic direction of the game is meaningfully connected to the actual narrative. Both (style and story) communicate the idea that identity and consciousness are fragile constructions of the mind that can be broken and refashioned. TEW's central villain, Ruvik, is a scientist interested in just this, i.e., the constructedness of selfhood and how it can be taken apart and made into something else. Narrative and autobiography play a major role in creating our sense of self, and the fact that TEW is willing to play with this by presenting an incomplete portrait of its events fits into this exploration of the artificiality of the self.

Unique game mechanics also serve to elevate TEW. For example, enemies get up a lot after being shot, even though they seem to be dead. To be sure they won't harass you any further, you have to burn them with matches, which are a limited resource. Viewed "realistically" it's a silly contrivance. You even have to upgrade your character so he can carry more than five matches at a time. However, in the heat of battle, it adds layers of depth and strategy to the game that are fairly unique. You can burn nearby enemies by setting a fallen undead on fire. This leads to tense situations where you use yourself as bait to lure monsters to a body, only to set both ablaze with a well-timed strike. It's nonsensical and gamey, but it's also a lot of fun and unlike anything else.

The game's aiming system is another strength I feel that most reviewers have passed over. What's special about it is that aiming your weapon zooms the camera into essentially a first-person perspective. Where most third-person shooters keep the camera just behind and above the avatar's shoulder, in TEW, you zoom right past that position to look through the character's eyes. This really threw me the first time I used a gun, but in time, I came to really appreciate the way it made battle more immersive and heightened in detail, as it is in FPS's.

As a survival horror game, TEW pulls no punches. The scales almost always feel like they are tipped against you and, for the most part, this is intentional. Opponents are usually faster, stronger, and more resilient. Resources are limited, traps are devious, and checkpoints are erratic. Overall, these design decisions serve to enhance the game.

For starters, by putting the player at a distinct disadvantage, the game embraces survival horror in ways that recent games seem afraid to. TEW isn't scary per se, but it keeps ever mindful of your situation and vulnerability, pressing you to look nervously around every corner wondering what's coming next. The relative slowness of your avatar is as essential to this feeling as is your limited ammunition. It has its shortcomings, but I find this version of survival horror more satisfying than those conjured up in Dead Space and The Last of Us. Dead Space indulges power fantasies by putting the player in the position of a powerful cyborg with advanced weaponry, and relies on jump scares and monster closets for its horror, which becomes tedious and predictable fairly early on. The Last of Us relies on visuals and narrative to shock the player rather terrifying gameplay. TEW, by contrast, achieves its horror through its core mechanics.

More significantly, difficulty is how TEW shows its respect for the player as a thinking, curious, problem-solving human being. The game is rough around the edges, but much of that comes from the fact that it isn't holding your hand and telling you what to do. Instead, the game wants the player to figure things out for him or herself. This can and will lead to confusion and frustration, but it is, perhaps unavoidably, a necessary corollary to letting the player discover things in his/her own way. There's a lot of viable paths to tackling a problem in TEW, and most of them require intelligence and foresight. The third chapter of the game, which pits you against a village full of undead and traps, manages this brilliantly. Occasionally, things don't work well, but this is more the exception than the rule and only becomes genuinely bothersome on the highest difficulties.

I think it's this commitment to serious game design that ultimately sold me on TEW. At every moment, from fighting, to resource management, to upgrading my stats between levels, I felt the game effectively communicated that how things went down depended on me and the choices I made. It respected me to think for myself when confronted with a challenge and to deal with the consequences of my actions. It regularly threw new problems my way and rarely played the same trick twice. As a result, each session felt fresh and exciting.

I'm surprised at how much I've enjoyed playing The Evil Within the past
four weeks, because it's a game with serious issues. As many critics
have pointed out, the controls and mechanics are opaque and sometimes
inconsistent, and in many ways it is a throwback to a long-gone era of gaming. And yet, despite these problems,
I've played this game more and had more fun with it than its more
polished survival horror stablemates such The Last of Us and Dead
Space. Sometimes I wonder if I like TEW because its flaws and not in spite of them as they give it a certain charm. But ultimately I think that in today's AAA culture of playing to the lowest common denominator, it's a pleasure to play a game that isn't afraid to
treat me as an adult.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

After watching some of the streams of the Bloodborne alpha today, I can't help feel that, at least in terms of the multiplayer, the game comes off as a little stale.

I was hoping for some real innovation in this department. So far, things seem pretty much the same, with only superficial differences. Messages, bloodstains, and phantoms are still there, only now the messages appear as a scroll, the bloodstains are a tombstone, and phantoms are more wire-frame. Otherwise, they function exactly the same. Wow, what a revolution!

I haven't seen much of any co-op, but from what I've read, it seems you ring a bell to summon/be summoned. Again, not a huge change.

It might be premature, but it's starting to look like Miyazaki's secretiveness about the multiplayer system was only hiding the fact that there's nothing to hide at all.

It's a shame, because just on my lonesome, I've been able to think up much better things to do with the game. For example, why not ditch the cumbersomeness of selecting text messages and instead let the player hit a button that begins recording their play for 30 seconds. Players could teach other players about secrets and strategies by letting that recording float around the server. Helpful phantoms could be thanked by shaking the controller.

Or how about, for co-op, make it truly seamless by having players enter and exit each other's worlds automatically, without prompting. Determining whether the other player is friend or foe would become a tense, but inevitable, part of gameplay experience. Co-operation would finally have real weight and consequences, as now working together would require an actual bond of trust.

Neither of these things would have been impossible to implement. But instead of pushing themselves, FROM seems to have decided to retread their once revolutionary, but now overly familiar, multiplayer ideas.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

With all the recent info that has come out on Bloodborne this past week, I've decided to write-up my own thoughts about the game at the moment. Mainly, I've noticed a couple of things about the game that I think people have generally missed because they require you to read between the lines of all the various press releases, interviews, and demonstrations that have come out over the weeks leading up to and including Gamescon. These points have to do with the nature of Bloodborne's gameplay and its difficulty, as well as with how these things fit into the evolution of Souls series toward what can be called the "mainstream gaming audience."

First, regarding Bloodborne'sgameplay: After reviewing the leaked footage from Gamescon and assessing it in light of From's past statements about the game, I've come to the conclusion that although Bloodborne's dark aesthetic is reminiscent of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls, its design is much more influenced by Dark Souls II. In the first place, Bloodborne will return us to Dark Souls II's emphasis on mob combat with renewed force. Watching the Gamescon footage, you will see that players come against many enemies who attack in groups rather than one-on-one. This was a gameplay direction introduced by Dark Souls II and it marked a significant departure from the previous two Souls games which favored single enemy encounters. It's safe to say that the mob combat style will be a staple of Bloodborne as well, as From has
said more than once that the threat of being overwhelmed by multiple
enemies is part of the game's core design philosophy.

Another point to consider is how Bloodborne constructs player's combat repetoire. Like Dark Souls II, Bloodborne will emphasize the agility of the player. Dark Souls II made this into its own stat within the RPG mechanics of the Souls series. Its function in that game was to increase the character's ability to react swiftly and dodge enemy attacks. In Bloodborne, this stat has been made into an obligatory feature of gameplay, with evasive swiftness now being a necessary part of the player's toolset rather than an optional playstyle. In essence, what was a new, experimental mechanic in Dark Souls II will now be a crucial, required component of Bloodborne.

There are lots of other little things that suggest that Bloodborne and Dark Souls II are conceptually connected in terms of design. The return of torches and dark spaces in Bloodborne hints that this attempted and seemingly abandoned mechanic in Dark Souls II is being re-attempted in Bloodborne. Also, at least one character revealed in the Gamescon footage appears to be a near copy-and-paste of an enemy from Dark Souls II. I am speaking here of the cloaked monster banging on the gate that appears around 2:45 in this video. The enemy is very similar to the Undead Jailors fought in the Lost Bastille section of Dark Souls II.

I think these links between Dark Souls II and Bloodborne should be seen as very significant. For starters, it undermines a hard and fast division between the two games that many fans have imagined to exist within From Software's development process. In an interview with Miyazaki (the director of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls), it was reported that Dark Souls II was developed by a separate team of which Miyazaki was not a part. At the time, Miyazaki was actually working on Bloodborne with another team. Some have used this fact as a way of asserting that Bloodborne will be cut from a whole other cloth from that of Dark Souls II. I think these initial comparisons between the games that I have made suggest a different relationship between the two games. Rather than happening in separate isolation chambers, it's clear that there was a good deal of communication and shared design ideas between the two teams. Indeed, it appears that the two games grew out of the same pool of ideas and were guided by same overall plan to re-tool the series into something else. It is this something else that I think fans of the first two games should take time to pause and consider, because it is part and parcel with From's apparent plan for the series since the success of Dark Souls.

The plan, in brief, is to make the Souls series into a more mainstream affair--a plan that, however beneficial it may be to the game's creators, conflicts with what some, including myself, would call the "purity" of the series. This purity, for better or worse, has to do with the uncompromising sense of difficulty, both in terms of figuring out how the overall game system works and mastering the individual challenges presented moment to moment, that the series reintroduced to the world. This is probably the most touchy subject for the games. In the past, any hint that their "hardcore" aspects would be pared back has been swiftly denounced by the most ardent fans. At the same time, there has been a consistent appeal from the wider gaming community that the game be made less unwelcoming to less dedicated gamers. Like it or not, From has shown itself to be more interested in reaching out to the latter group than in satisfying the hardcore desires of the former, and this is an attitude and approach that is written all over what we've been shown about Bloodborne so far.

Going back to the game's release at E3, snippets leaking out of a press meeting about Bloodborne being a less difficult game have been making the rounds. At Gamescon, some of these rumors became more concrete through some of From's own statements. According to multiple outlets, its developers are saying that "the sense of punishment is much less" this time around, explaining that they are aiming for a "wider audience." Some high profile fans, such as VaatiVidya, have been quick to dismiss the concerns rising from this, telling us to "trust in Miyazaki." Well, we've already been around that block before with Dark Souls II and its own "accessibility-gate," and we know where that ended, don't we?

Dark Souls II isn't a bad or easy game by any stretch of the imagination, but most fans of the first two games agree that a number of key elements that made Dark Souls and Demon's Souls so special, such as the large gaps between save-points and the regeneration of enemies, were significantly watered down in Dark Souls II. Other areas of compromise included the addition of voice-chat and targeted co-op, both of which I wrote about before the game came out. These were concessions to vocal gamers who weren't happy with the past entries and wanted to see the series remade along more popular conventions. From reps, including a Namco-Bandai Community Manager in response to my article, assured that these changes were not indications of series dilution (see the comments section of my post linked above). Once people finally got their hands on the game, however, it quickly became clear that something had happened to the Souls series over the course of Dark Souls II's development. Its vitality had been lost. Players weren't as moved by it as they were by the other games. Even diehard fans like EpicNameBro seem to have become apathetic to Dark Souls II at this point, despite having worked on the game's official strategy guide. Following its release, he hasn't done anything with the game in months.

Now, on the eve of Bloodborne's announcement, we are faced with the same situation, the same worries and apprehensions. From is once again making sounds about decreasing difficulty to reach a wider audience, and certain individuals are once again out in full force putting down anyone who dares to raise an eyebrow at these statements. My point is that we should learn from history and read these signs for what they are. Since Dark Souls, From has sought to market its series to an increasingly mainstream audience and the consequence of this is that it has become incrementally less compellingly intense and more banally accommodating.

Watching the demo footage from
Gamescon and reading journalists' reports, it seems that
Bloodborne will continue this trend by being a more forgiving game. Not only is the player
character more agile than ever, making dodging considerably easier, the
game further decreases the difficulty by installing a "regain" mechanic
that lets player's quickly recoup lost health by (wildly, from the footage we've seen) striking back at
enemies. In the demo footage leaked, one can see relatively
inexperienced players gain back large swathes of health in this way simply by
button-mashing. Some will defend this by citing reports that the difficulty of the demo was toned down to let players
experience the full package. I remain skeptical of this. If thought
about, the idea doesn't make much sense. Wouldn't that be tantamount to
deceiving potential customers about the nature of the game, while at the
same time alienating the series' biggest fans? I'm of the opinion
that From's claim about the demo being dumbed-down is
probably just a cover to stop diehard Souls players from finding out the
truth until it's too late.

Some people say that we should simply trust in From. The same thing was suggested for Dark Souls II. Others try to blame Dark Souls II's failings on the absence of Miyazaki from the project, and using that as proof that Bloodborne will be better. I say such thinking is naive. There is clearly a great deal of overlap in terms of the concepts and design for both games, developed in tandem. If Dark Souls II failed to live up to the undiminished intensity of the prior games, it was not because Miyazaki wasn't involved in it. Rather, the shortcomings of Dark Souls II reflect From Software's new view of the Souls series as a mainstream title. Far from disappearing from Bloodborne, this broad-appeal philosophy clearly continues to be a driving force in its creation.

I worry that Bloodborne will likely continue From's search for a wider audience by being a less demanding and less punishing game. I doubt it will be an easy game, and I hope there will be some good challenges along the way, but overall, I can't help but wonder if it will be part of the series' incremental slide to the lowest common denominator of video game culture, at which point violence, instant gratification, and accessibility become king.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Last week it was revealed that recording for the upcoming From Software title, Bloodborne, was being done at Air Lyndhurst Studios in London. Now, further information about the game's composer has materialized (courtesy of the Bloodborne Unofficial Blog). It appears that at least some of the music for Bloodborne will be the work of movie and videogame composer Michael Wandmacher.

Here's a little from his work bio:

Composer Michael Wandmacher is one of most diverse talents working in film music today. His resume of over 50 titles includes composing scores for films and television across multiple genres, videogames, songwriting, remixing, producing, and music design. As a stalwart composer in the horror and thriller genres, he provided scores for Patrick Lussier’s My Bloody Valentine 3D, which grossed over $100M worldwide and director Alex Aja’s Piranha 3D. He also created the high-octane action scores for Marvel’s Punisher: War Zone, Drive Angry, and the now-cult-classic actioner Never Back Down.

Wandmacher has also composed music for videogames, including Activision's Singularity and Sony's Twisted Metal re-launch. A brief scan of Wandmacher's work reveals that he specializes in horror scores. This mostly reinforces early impressions about the tone of Bloodborne being darker than prior Souls titles.

If you're curious to hear some of his work, you can find an example here.

I'm interested to find out what fans think of this development. Is this a good or bad step for the Souls series? Does the hiring of Wandmacher mean that fan-favorite composer Motoi Sakuraba won't be involved in the game? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Like many people, given all the hype surrounding Bungie's new game, Destiny, I had high expectations going into the game's beta test that began on Thursday. With the famed creators of the Halo series behind the wheel, $500,000,000 of funding, and Peter Dinklage's voice, how could the game be anything short of stellar? Unfortunately, it seems that Destiny is something less. Destiny is a well-constructed first person shooter with some mmorpg elements and novel mechanics thrown into the mix. But great it is not. In fact, to be perfectly honest, my overall experience of the beta was pretty bland. In what follows, I explain why.

But first, let's talk about what Destiny gets right, because the game certainly deserves some credit for its achievements.

Destiny has one of the slickest interfaces I have every had the pleasure of navigating. Everything about it, from the way you move a cursor across the screen to the satisfying manner in which buttons highlight when you hover over them, makes the user feel like he or she is playing on a computer rather than a console. More significantly, the way the interface gently guides you through its various menus for upgrading, messaging, and equipment management is remarkably graceful. The interface lets you know what can be upgraded, what new equipment is available, and how much progress until your next level at a glance, without ever being burdensome. It's obvious that significant thought went into this part of the game and it should be a lesson other developers.

The shooting mechanics also deserve praise. Destiny's guns have real heft to them when being fired. Shots crackle and whiz through the air more impressively than in perhaps any other game today. Control is tight and refined, with the enemy A.I. helping to bring this into relief. Badies duck, cover, and jump around the arena, taking potshots and lobbing grenades at you from multiple angles. Whenever you take out one these foes with a well timed shot to the head, you really appreciate Bungie's expertise in this area.

As the sheen of these achievements fades away, however, Destiny's lack of ingenuity begins to show. As good at being an fps as Destiny is, it doesn't offer anything cohesive that transcends the limitations of the genre that have set in over the past twenty or so years.

Most disappointing are the role-playing mechanics. In Destiny, you level up by accruing XP gained in combat which in turn unlocks new abilities and power ups that make your character ever deadlier. This was something that really appealed to me going into the beta. What I found out, however, was that there wasn't much "role-playing" to this rpg mechanic. In most rpg's, the player makes decisions about allocating points into different stats, creating a unique character-build over time suited to his or her playstyle. Destiny doesn't go this route. Rather, character development in the game is largely automatic, with abilities and power-ups simply unlocking for your use. There's no real thought or design that goes into developing your character. And it's hard to become invested in this process as a result.

A similar point about a lack of immersion can be made regarding Destiny's mission design. What I had hoped for was a big, open world in which I could adventure, explore, meet other players, and quest, i.e., many gameplay loops intersecting each other at multiple points. Instead, Destiny's gameplay loop is much more singular. You choose a chapter to play and you are then transported to the map where it takes place. You then follow the waypoints set by your computer, called a "ghost," and fight enemies along the way until you reach your goal.

There's really nothing to distract you along the way during Destiny's missions, no intriguing ruins or towers in the distance to investigate, no strange creatures prowling about, or npc's asking for assistance. The process is instead highly linear, with you generally following the obvious path carved out for you by the designers. The one exception is the random events that take place on occasion, which are essentially timed challenges where you fight a shipment of enemies being dropped somewhere on the map. But it's so contrived (a big message flashes on the screen telling when it's happening) that I hesitate to call it anything more than a minor diversion.

The beta does have a "mission" option, titled "Explore," that invites the player to roam about the map. But here enters another problem: the world design is so bland and uninteresting that it doesn't provide any intrinsic motivation to venture out into it. Destiny doesn't really feel like a world as such, but a large multiplayer map with some loot scattered about. Some people will be fine with this and will be happy just to run around with other players shooting up various mobs as they spawn and respawn, but I myself like my game worlds to have a little more depth and range.

I think a better version of Destiny would have instead focused on crafting one, huge open-world that encouraged players to venture out and find things to do, people to meet, and mysteries to uncover. There would be towns scattered about where players would trade, re-equip, form parties, and plan adventures. It would be a less designer-centered experience, and more of a player-driven one, all lovingly-wrapped in the flawless fps mechanics and gameplay that Bungie has come to stand for.

I suppose I can't say I'm terribly surprised that Destiny has turned out the way it has. Given the immense financial investment that went into it, you might say it was almost inevitable that it would be a more straight-forward, linear action affair. "Accessibility" is the word here. Bungie and their publisher Activision need to sell a lot of copies of this game to recoup what they've spent on it. Sadly, for most game companies, this means appealing to the lowest common denominator. If a game is too intricate or too difficult to get into at the beginning, it risks alienating players and potential customers. For this reason, Bungie has made the game's level cap extremely unambitious (rumored to be at level 20). As their investiment lead, Tyson Greens said (as reported by Eurogamer): "We wanted levelling up and reaching a cap something you don't look at
and say, 'well, that will take me weeks so therefore I can't play with
my friends who are already at the level cap.'" No doubt Bungie came to a similar conclusion about making a more layered and intricate game.

It's a shame that game design today is ruled by such narrow thinking and that developers have so little faith in their audience's desire to be challenged in ways that go beyond traditional areas of effective combat. Destiny could have been something truly special. As it stands, at least from what the beta shows us, it is a solid first person shooter with pretensions that it doesn't live up to.